That’s his job.
I’m an educator of almost adults as well as a mother of numerous children, and people who are predatory towards children and young technically adult people aren’t on my list of people with whom I want any contact at all.
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I think that for the victim it’s actually worse than murder, it can blight a person permanently and can lead to all sorts of horrible life-long knock-on effects. I wouldn’t expect a victim’s family to see it that way, especially because a lot of this abuse is intrafamilial. I think these abusers generally don’t consider their victims at all, they are manipulative sociopaths and may frequently feign rehabilitation but don’t actually feel any guilt or empathy or remorse.
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Of course - the driver for doing such things is self-gratification, and naturally that excludes the views of the victim.
My view is that the only way they might become rehabilitated is if there were something else they valued above fulfilling their sexual desires. I’ve known 2 pedophiles, 1 before they were caught, 1 after. The one after was sly, manipulative and cruel. The one before showed genuine remorse, I believe, after being caught, having given in to urges he recognised as wrong rather than denying what he was doing - I think for him, being caught was a relief.
I know someone who went through exactly what you describe as a child. I can attest that the effects are both severe and life long.
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Hmm
Hardly surprising - adults will groom children for sex. They may realise what they are doing or they may not but it’s grooming either way. That involves building trust - when the child later realises that deep trust has been abused it is not surprising that it is devastating.
Then the hysteria which surrounds the whole thing makes it even worse.
Which can be codified in various ways - eg AoC is 14, but if one partner is above 16 the maximum age difference is 2 years. that sort of thing.
If you have to have a single limit 16 (as in the UK) or 15 (as in France) is probably about right but it still risks criminalising 14 year olds. Thhough personally I think anything lower than 15 is too low without a “similar age” rule.
The general public does not care but it is worth remembering that quite a lot of what is being discussed is not actually paedophilia - which is defined as sexual attraction to prepubescent children (so, typically younger than 11 - though 13 is used for the definition of the condition) and is normally felt to be a disorder of sexual attraction.
Hebephilia is sexual attraction to young/pubescent adolescents (11-14) and Ephebophilia is attraction to older adolescents (15-19) but there’s a lot of overlap and shades of grey but (I think) only paedophillia is actually classified as a psychiatric disorder.
And you’re quite correct there too - it’s a convenient shorthand here, but yes much more nuanced than that. I have a feeling that actual paedophilia was really quite common at one time, and has gradually diminished significantly, but have no data to support that.
If the UK crime stats are correct child sex abuse has been increasing for years with an average of 1000 arrests per month of potential offenders with nearly 15% of the prison population being child sex offenders.
Everything I’ve seen has been careful to say recorded cases have been increasing and we don’t know if abuse is increasing or if there’s simply more reporting, or somewhere in between. I suspect there’s a lot less tolerance for it these days and the justice system takes it a lot more seriously.
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Certainly detection of possession/distribution of abusive images of children is much easier nowadays.
Though a search shows that an alarming number of assaults are committed by children (Nearly 40,000 child-on-child sexual abuse offences recorded in one year | The Independent), presumably because of the hyper-sexualisation of modern society.
I’m certain reporting levels are much higher now than when many of us grew up. Reporting is expected now, rather than ‘being silly’ as it would be at one time. Those I’ve known who suffered abuse as children have reported the abuse they suffered as attitudes change in more recent years.
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I remember watching a Fr literary programme on television, possibly ‘Apostrophes’, Bernard Pivot was the host anyway, and that revolting pervert rapist Gabriel Matzneff was on promoting his book where he boasted about going off to the Philippines etc and sexually assaulting little boys and girls, and the only person who reacted negatively was Denise Bombardier (Québécoise writer) who put words on what he was doing, meanwhile everyone else was much too sophisticated, or perhaps just stupid and thoughtless, to condemn that disgusting creature. This would have been in the late 1980s.
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I think at one time, possibly not so long ago, having sex with children was a sign of a sophisticated palate, as you suggest.
Really?
In some restricted circle perhaps.
Ancient Greece maybe?
Pakistan, Catholic church/school.
I don’t suggest any such thing - I should have put inverted commas around sophisticated, I think people will accept any appalling thing if it’s presented as ‘sophisticated’ or ‘smart’ or ‘intellectually ok’ when in fact it’s just hideous egotistic sometimes criminal behaviour. If you want to get away with some abhorrent behaviour tart it up and present it as an elite pastime. Emperor’s new clothes.
It’s worth reflecting that if Epstein had not been a pedophile, none of the “business as usual” corruption (and there’s lots more to come IMO, if not successfully suppressed) would ever have emerged either.
Virginia Giuffre not only courageously exposed a wealthy, powerful pedophile ring, but also collaterally a window on the whole dirty rotten political and business system.
Absolutely, Charlie is up to his teeth in it. His mum was ailing and he was sharing the management of the Firm when the payoff happened. Plus, apparently, he contributed to the payoff to a “woman Andrew had never met and never slept with” 
Now Charlie isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer (of a selection of chinless dull knives) but even he would have known this was a coverup.
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Can you prove any of that John?
It seems the longer the Epstein revelations go on the more people in public life are being linked to it.
Don’t know if you’ve read this in today’s Grauniad, but if not it’s worth a look.
For me one of the stranger aspects of the whole business is how so much of it resembles that QAnon conspiracy theory, apart from not eating children in some NYC pizza resto and the elites involved tending to be wealthy right wingers rather than liberals…
Which bit?
“sharing the management of the Firm” is obvious, would the Queen pop her clogs without him being up to speed?
"contributed to the payoff " If you look at the number of denials of his contribution, then I, as a dyed in the wool cynic, would say he definitely did. One way or another.
Bottom line… he knew what was going on.
They are all self-serving, name changing, shapeshifting leeches, and always have been, for hundreds of years.
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Right now, it hasn’t been proved that AMW has actually done anything illegal, only he and perhaps one or two others know how deep his involvement was with Epstein’s trafficking operation and until real evidence is unearthed or he decides to tell all then it’s just speculation and assumption.